Temporary help businesses schedule personnel suited to particular tasks for work on a temporary basis. They screen temporary help applicants, match their particular skills to client job orders, and monitor jobs in progress. At the same time, they take and fill client job orders. As the need for temporary help expands, temporary help employees expect uninterrupted work at a series of jobs. This is known in the art as "stacking jobs." Scheduling work, training, and "stacking jobs" provides incentive to temporary help workers to remain employed by a single temporary help business. Scheduling temporary workers with suitable talents quickly and economically satisfies clients. Serving temporary employees and clients is a goal of temporary help businesses and an object of the present invention.
Temporary help businesses use several techniques to manage their operations. Some keep paper records of all employees and transactions. Some use paper records and digital computers in combination. For example, an applicant requesting temporary work assignments might complete a paper record of personal data, and take computerized tests to assess specific skills. Most temporary help businesses use some form of computerized accounting.
Typically, these various paper and computerized operations management systems are not integrated within the temporary help business. These systems often do not facilitate matching employees to jobs by inexact criteria such as near dates or near skills. Some systems do not facilitate "stacking jobs." Principally, these systems do not permit automated communication between buyers and sellers of temporary help services. This results in duplication of manual input, decrease in responsiveness, and increased data entry errors.
An advanced example of a computerized system is the System for Monitoring Temporary Help Usage in a Multi-Vendor Environment, disclosed hereinbelow, by Stipanovich, co-inventor of the present invention. This system provides temporary help scheduling for a narrow group of temporary help businesses: internal temporary help departments of large corporations. This system is based on cost-tracking, and monitors scheduling of both an internal pool of temporary help workers, and workers scheduled by outside vendors. Like the present invention, the system schedules temporary employees based on availability and skills. Unlike the present invention, the prior system:
1. minimizes expenditures for temporary help, PA0 2. tracks temporary help provided by multiple vendors, PA0 3. is primarily an accounting and mainframe interface system, and PA0 4. does not provide "stacking" of temporary jobs.
Other systems known in the art provide similar, but more limited functionality.